Corbyn’s friends abroad prove he’s unfit to lead

His rabidly anti-American and pro-Putin world view is alarming and makes him
unfit to be Labour leader

Mr Corbyn has a characteristic blind spot when it comes to RussiaPhoto: Rex Features

By Edward Lucas

5:25PM BST 26 Aug 2015

Even the practitioners of political euthanasia running Labour’s leadership election would have objected to new members registering from Gaza, Venezuela, or a posh address outside Moscow.

But this week there can be no doubt whom the leaders of the world’s most unpleasant regimes would like as putative prime minister of this country: Jeremy Corbyn, who can see nothing right with America and nothing wrong with its foes.

To be fair, Mr Corbyn’s views, taken singly, are defensible. His desire to appease Russia by sacrificing Ukraine is shared by many practitioners of realpolitik, including Henry Kissinger. Likewise Mr Corbyn’s criticism of the Iraqi government’s alienation of the Sunni tribes, forcing them into the arms of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), is mainstream. Israelis themselves criticise their government in the most vehement terms.

"The one-sidedness in Mr Corbyn’s outlook is particularly grotesque when it comes to Russia"

He lambasts Israel on all counts – but has nothing to say about the dictatorial ways of the Palestinian authorities.

Loathing of America, and of anyone who follows the American lead in world affairs, exerts such force on the Corbynistas that it distorts their world view. Of course America makes mistakes – grievous ones, which are scrutinised sharply in its political system and media. But to equate the US with Isil is ludicrous. The United States, to put it simply, does not behead archaeologists as idolaters, massacre people on grounds of religion, consigning their wives and daughters to officially sanctioned sexual slavery. Most people can see that difference.

Western democracy (contrary to the Corbyn camp’s fervent if paranoid beliefs) broadly works. Judges are honest. Opposition activists are not murdered. The security services are not the political tools of the authorities. The media are not censored. Mistakes are contested, and may even be rectified. This system of government is generally popular elsewhere. People seem rather keener to come and live in the Western countries that the Corbynistas revile, than under regimes that they revere.

The one-sidedness in Mr Corbyn’s outlook is particularly grotesque when it comes to Russia. Vladimir Putin has turned the country into an oil-fuelled kleptocracy ruled by secret police goons and their cronies, with an increasingly sinister ideology consisting of anti-Westernism, clericalism and nationalism.

But Mr Corbyn has a characteristic blind spot when it comes to Russia. The Kremlin stands up to the West. The West is evil. Therefore the Kremlin is good.

The truth is a bit more complicated. Barack Obama wants to abolish nuclear weapons. Russia doesn’t: it regularly reminds the world that it has a nuclear arsenal and is prepared to use it. America is trying to wind down its military presence in Europe; Russia is rearming fast, with aggressive and secretive military exercises which aim to intimidate its neighbours. Guess which country makes Mr Corbyn’s beard bristle?

I recently asked Mr Corbyn, via Twitter, why his anti-imperialist sentiments did not stretch to understanding countries such as Ukraine. As the late great Robert Conquest made unanswerably clear, the captive nations of the Soviet empire suffered a level of barbarity and oppression which only the most brutal episodes in European colonial history can match. They should surely deserve not just sympathy but respect, particularly from those whose sympathy is naturally with the underdog.

Chocolate Putin: Cheers! Photo: Getty

Of course, the Labour Party has always had a Soviet-loving, fellow-travelling fringe: notorious figures included Joan Maynard (nicknamed “Stalin’s Granny”) and Frank Allaun of CND. Their professed motivations were a mixture of loyalty to the ideals of socialism and gratitude for Soviet sacrifices in the war. In the darker corners of the Labour Party and trade union movement there were other, more sinister ties, fuelled by secret payments, and involving cooperation with Soviet-block spy agencies.

We cannot know what dark arts may still be at play these days. But even the visible picture is alarming. Some of Mr Corbyn’s bedfellows are other Left-wingers crazed by anti-Americanism: Germany’s Die Linke party, for example.

But the Putin regime’s greatest fans in Europe are Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, Hungary’s racist Jobbik party, and the like. These types, thick of neck and rough in speech, yearn to wield power with Putinesque brutality. They come from an end of the political spectrum which sensitive Islington consciences should find particularly repellent.

That Mr Corbyn overlooks the real nature of Putinism and its supporters is above all why he is unfit to lead the Labour Party, let alone the country.